Feral domestic cats are a global threat to biodiversity and were recently named as the biggest threat to endangered Australian mammals. But what about your pet cat, or the local stray? While any kind of…
Could Australia’s new threatened species commissioner be the break Tasmania’s endangered devils need?
jomilo75/Flickr
Australia’s threatened animals and plants may have received a small win today — the announcement of Australia’s first threatened species commissioner by Environment Minister Greg Hunt in Melbourne. The…
A greater stick-nest rat ready to be released - with radio collar attached.
Arid Recovery
Almost a third of Australia’s mammals have become extinct or are facing extinction, largely thanks to introduced predators such as cats and foxes. But what is the best way to save the species still alive…
What’s the best way to give Australia’s mammals a helping hand?
Northern Australia Hub, National Environmental Research Program
Twenty-nine Australian land mammals have become extinct over the last 200 years, and 56 are currently facing extinction. These losses and potential losses represent over a third of the 315 species present…
Back after going missing for more than a century: the New Guinea big-eared bat.
Julie Broken-Brow/supplied
More than a century after it was “lost”, the New Guinea big-eared bat has been discovered by Queensland researchers working in Papua New Guinea’s forests. The critically endangered bat was thought to be…
Why do tropical areas produce so many species, such as this grey long tailed macaque?
Michelle Foong
Picture a tropical rainforest, with thousands of species per hectare, and it’s quite easy to believe that up to three quarters of all plant and animal species are found in the tropics. But what makes the…
For 20 privileged Victorians, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins held a lavish New Year’s dinner party in 1853 inside a model of a dinosaur that was created for the Great Exhibition held two years earlier. Hawkins’s…
Like many island animals, the Kangaroo Island Dunnart is critically endangered.
Jody Gates
Island fauna are particularly vulnerable to new threats. Not only do they have a very limited population size and distribution to begin with, they can display extreme naïveté to new predators, due to a…
In the field of animal behaviour, there is one topic that is almost guaranteed to get your study in the popular press: showing how an animal behaves just like humans. This can be solving problems, using…
Hummingbird-pollinated flowers evolved perfectly to suit the bird’s bill shape, its colour vision and even its taste buds. This is the beauty of co-evolution, where two species interact so closely that…
Woylie have decline by up to 95% since 2001. Why is a mystery.
Flickr/Arthur Chapman
The introduced red fox (Vulpes vulpes) has had a devastating impact of Australia’s native mammal fauna, particularly on those in the “Critical Weight Range”, between 35 and 5500 grams. Combined with landscape…
The Lesser Stick-nest Rat is poorly known, and definitely didn’t climb around in trees.
Wikimedia Commons
Australia has the world’s worst mammalian extinction records. Since 1788, 21 species have gone extinct in Australia and its territories. This includes 10 rodents, mostly from the arid interior. As with…
Mammals are disappearing across northern Australia; the Capentarian Rock-rat is one of them.
Damien Stanioch
Mammals are disappearing in Australia’s Top End, and we’re not really sure why. This is particularly concerning as northern Australia has a human population density of one person per ten square kilometres…
The decline of digging mammals, such as this bilby, is threatening Australia’s ecosystems.
AAP Image/National Parks and Wildlife
Despite once being described as common, mammals have been lost across the Australian landscape over the last 200 years. The impact has been particularly severe on Australia’s digging mammals, including…
How do you get to know one of Earth’s most mysterious creatures? By looking at its earwax, according to a group of US researchers. Analysing the contents of blue whales’ ears, through a process similar…
A Bramble Cay Melomys nibbling on some island herbage.
Queensland Government
The Bramble Cay Melomys (Melomys rubicola) has one of the most unusual and precarious distributions of all Australian mammals. The melomys is restricted to an unstable 4-5 hectare coral cay in the eastern…
While people cheating on their partners is frowned upon in modern society, monogamy among mammals is something of an evolutionary puzzle. Some stick to one sexual partner for a lifetime. That is why the…
The Central Rock-rat appears to have disappeared. Why?
DLRM, NT Government
Australia’s small arid zone mammals have greatly suffered since European settlement. Some 11 species are extinct, and a further eight are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Their loss has been…